Word had gotten out that the BWO hatch was in full swing and by the time I arrived, the parking lot was swarming with anglers rigging up their drift boats, stringing rods and donning waders, boots and vests. I'd never seen the parking lot so full and so many excited anglers on the river.

As I watched the orchestrated madness, I came to the stunning conclusion that I had become one of them. I had become what I used to laugh at, make fun of and generally belittle. I was just as swept up in the excitement of the hatch as those hemostat-carrying, rod-waving, Gortex-clad, fly-fishing fanatics.

As I cast my five-weight, weight forward, floating line with its seven foot, 5X, tapered leader, 18 inches of 6X tippet and number 20 Blue Wing Olive to a fish working the scum-line on the outer edge of a back eddy, I wondered how I had progressed from a wet-wading, worm-dunking, spin-fishing kid to the mayfly hatch on the Green River, below Flaming Gorge Dam in Northeastern Utah?

As a youngster I remember my dad talking about fly-fishing for grayling in the high mountain lakes of Northern Utah, using catgut leader, a bamboo rod and a dry fly he called a Mormon Girl. By the time I was old enough to follow him into a stream, he had graduated to a fiberglass fly rod, double tapered fly line, about 6 feet of 12-pound leader (not tapered) and a size 6, snelled, bait hook. His "fly" was the lowly "garden hackle."

He fished with worms and his five sons learned to fish with worms. For years the total extent of my fishing tackle was a six-pack of number 8 snelled hooks, a bottle of bb-sized sinkers, my rod and an inexpensive spinning reel wound with six-pound monofilament. Of course before I went fishing I headed to the garden and dug up a couple dozen worms. The red garden worms were my favorite. It seemed that the trout liked them better than the occasional nightcrawler I uncovered.

It was years later that I purchased my first fly rod. I had been invited to a casting clinic sponsored by the Winston Rod Company and I got hooked. Even then I refused to buy a fishing vest. No way was I going to wear one of those.

I stuffed my fly box, floatant, tippets, and extra leaders into my shirt pockets and away I went. I finally did break down and buy a pair of neoprene waders, to extend my fishing season. Wading wet was just too hard on my legs in late October and November.

In another year or so I had a new problem -- too many fly boxes and no way to carry them all. My wife, sensing my dilemma, bought me a vest and I grudgingly accepted it. Necessity caused me to fill the pockets, and oh how I loved all of those pockets. I had discovered long ago that you can never have too many pockets.

I wasn't planning on buying all the little gizmos that hang from fly-fishing vests. I actually don't even remember buying them. They just began to show up. First came line clippers, followed shortly by a hemostat, floatant holder, tiny tape measure, polarized sunglasses, thermometer, and even a tippet dispenser. Why on earth did I need a tippet dispenser?

I bought a float tube to fish for monster rainbows, "gulpers," on Hebgen Lake, Montana. I bought a two person pontoon boat, Outcast PAC 1200, so my wife and I could float the western rivers -- our favorite is the Green River below Flaming Gorge dam (before the rubber raft hatch begins in late May).

I bought breathable waders so I could fish the Colorado River at Lee's Ferry and the San Juan River below Navajo Dam, during the heat of the summer.

I bought a waterproof, breathable fishing jacket, Cabela's Backcountry Wading Jacket, so I could keep on fishing even when the weather turned, and I topped it off with a Cabela's River Guide canvas hat, to keep my ears from getting sunburned.

But a net? I just couldn't bring myself to buy a net. I rarely kept any fish, my kids refused to eat them, so I just brought the fish in, slipped the fly from its mouth and let it go. Generally the fish never left the water. Nets were for people that didn't know how to handle fish -- or maybe for people that didn't catch big fish?

All went well until the day I went fly-fishing for catfish. My fishing buddy hooked into a big one -- seven or eight pounds. As he brought it alongside his float tube and reached down to grab it, it began to thrash wildly back and forth.

One of its spines, I assume one of the big ones on its pectoral fins, penetrated his tube. My buddy kicked furiously toward the bank as the air bubbled out of his tube. That next week I bought a net. I still don't use it much, but I have one, just in case.

I picked my fly line up off the water, made a couple of false casts and dropped the fly just upstream of my intended victim. I mended the line and studied the indicator as the fly sank and began to move downstream. As I watched for any unnatural movement, I thought back to the day when I wouldn't use an indicator -- real fishermen don't need yarn bobbers! I wondered how many fish I had missed before I came to my senses.

And so it went, one piece of equipment at a time, and always for a good purpose -- "The wind might be blowing hard on the Miracle Mile of the North Platte River so I had better pick up a seven-weight rod, just in case."

I gazed across the river at the blood-red sandstone cliffs, punctuated by deep green ponderosa pines, and made a mental inventory of my "must have" fly-fishing gear. Between rods, reels, boats, flies, waders, vests, bags, coats, hats, etc., I now had several thousand dollars tied up in the sport that I had once considered frivolous and foolish.

A large cutthroat rolled near the head of the seam and I automatically pulled the slack out of my line, lifted it off the water and felt the rod load before I brought it forward. As the line sailed in a graceful loop, just over my head, I couldn't imagine being anywhere else or fishing in any other way. I will be forever grateful for that fly casting class so long ago that planted me squarely on the road to becoming a hemostat-carrying, rod-waving, Gortex-clad, fly-fishing fanatic.

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